duction abroad. The bias of the manufacturer seeking protection and of the importer opposing it weakens the weight of their testimony. Moreover, when we understand that the cost of production differs in one country abroad from that in another, and that it changes from year to year and from month to month, we must realize that the precise difference in cost of production sought for is not capable of definite ascertainment, and that all that even the most scientific person can do in his investigation is, after consideration of many facts which he learns, to exercise his best judgment in reaching a conclusion.

The Commission, however, already selected and at work, is a commission of disinterested persons who will ascertain the facts, not in a formal hearing by examination and crossexamination of witnesses, but by the kind of investigation that statisticians and scientific investigators use. When the Commission completes its work, either on the entire tariff or on any of the schedules in respect to which issue has arisen,, and the work of the Commission shows that the present tariff is wrong and should be changed, I expect to bring the matter to the attention of the Congress with a view to its amendment of the tariff in that particular. Of course, this will be imprac- ticable unless Congress itself shall adopt the parliamentary rule, as I hope it will, that a bill to amend one schedule of the tariff may not be subject to a motion to amend by adding changes in other schedules.

It will thus be possible to take up a single schedule with respect to which it is probable that a great majority of each House will be unprejudiced, to submit the evidence, and to reach a fair conclusion. For these reasons it seems to me that all Republicans-conservative, progressive and radicalmay well abide the situation with respect to the tariff until evidence now being accumulated shall justify changes in the rates; and that it is much better for them to vote for Republicans than to help create a Democratic majority which would be utterly at war with the protective principle, and therefore would have no use for the findings of the Tariff Commission, as we may certainly infer from the solid Democratic vote in the present Congress against the necessary appropriation for the Commission's work.

RESULTS OF PAYNE LAW.

One great virtue in the new tariff law, including the corporation tax, is that, taken with the earnest effort of the administration to keep down or reduce governmental expenditures and to reform the methods of collecting the customs revenue, it has, by its revenue-producing capacity, turned a deficit in the ordinary operations of the Government of $58,000,000 for

the year ending June 30, 1909, to a surplus in the first full year of the law, ending August 5, 1910, of $26,000,000. From a revenue standpoint, then, there can be no controversy over the effectiveness of the new law. Increased revenue indicates increased imports, and an examination of our imports during the past year will disclose a most substantial increase in manufacturers' material, from which, in the making of finished products, whether for exportation or home consumption, has come a larger volume of employment for our wage-earners, a larger purchasing power and a greater consumption of the products of our farms and fabrications of our factories. So. far, then, as such importations do not displace home production, they must be of benefit to all. Generally speaking, a full measure of industrial activity in production, transportation and distribution has accompanied the operation of the new law. Under the maximum and minimum provisions we have concluded treaties with all foreign nations, gaining the best possible terms for entrance to their markets without sacrificing our own. By the Payne tariff law we have at last done justice to the Philippines by allowing the producers of those islands the benefit of our markets, with such limitations as to prevent injury to our home industries.

Again, the present law in its corporation tax imposes a new kind of tax which has many of the merits of an income tax. It taxes success, not failure. Unlike a personal income tax, it is easily and exactly collected, and by an increase or decrease in the rate enables Congress with exactness to regulate its income to its necessary expenditures. More than this, it furnishes an indirect but effective method of keeping the Government advised as to the kind of business done by all corporations. It is one of the most useful and important changes in our revenue laws, as the future will show. In spite of the criticisms heaped upon it at its passage, no party responsible for revenues or anxious to retain every means of legitimate supervision of corporations will repeal it.

INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

The next most important work of the present Congress was the passage of the amendment to the interstate commerce bill. The Republican platform favored amendment to the interstate commerce act with a view to giving greater power to the Interstate Commerce Commission in regulating the operation of railroads and the fixing of traffic rates, and also favored such national legislation and supervision as would prevent the future over-issue of stocks and bonds by interstate carriers. After the adjournment of the Congress at its extra session, I invited two of my Cabinet and a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission and a member of Congress,

to make recommendations as to the needed amendments to the interstate commerce act. These gentlemen reported to me, and in September last, in a speech in Des Moines, I foreshadowed their recommendations as I intended to make them to the Congress for the amendment of the interstate commerce act:

First, by the establishment of a commerce court; second, by empowering the Commission to classify merchandise as well as to fix rates for classes; third, by giving the right to a shipper to designate the route by which his goods shall be transported beyond the line of the initial carrier; fourth, by empowering the Commission to consider the justice or injustice of any rate without the complaint or initiation of a shipper; fifth, by empowering the Commission to suspend proposed in-. creases of rates by carriers until the Commission shall have a chance to pass upon the reasonableness of the increase; sixth, by provisions for the Federal regulation of the issue of stocks and bonds by interstate railways; seventh, by a clause forbidding an interstate commerce railway company from acquiring stock in a competing road; eighth, by a section permitting the making of traffic agreements between competing railroads limited in point of time and subject matter, and subject to the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

These amendments were in accordance with the text of the Republican platform. Subsequently, bills were drawn embodying this recommended legislation, in which, while the principle was maintained, there were limitations introduced, as justice suggested, after a conference with all the parties interested. The bill was submitted to the Congress, and after a great deal of discussion, both in the House and the Senate, it was enacted into law, with many amendments which did not materially change the effect of the recommendations except to strike out certain provisions promised in the Republican platform, to permit traffic agreements between railways in spite of the anti-trust law, to forbid one railway company to acquire stock in a competing company, and to secure supervision by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the issue of stocks and bonds by interstate railways.

For this last, was substituted a provision authorizing the appointment of a commission to consider the evils arising from the over-issue of stocks and bonds, and the methods of preventing such evils by Congressional regulation. In addition to the purposes already recited accomplished by the bill, the so-called long and short haul clause of the existing lawthe one forbidding the charging of a greater rate for a less distance included in the greater distance, than for the greater distance was amended so as to vest in the Commission some

The important part that railways play as th culation in the business of the country, the milli of their employees and the million of their sto importance of their purchasing power as affect perity of general business-all require in the p that no unfair treatment should be accorded t am glad to note that the railway managers ha in the fairness of the present bill, and propos comply with its useful provisions. It was supp whole Republican party in Congress, and that par to credit for its passage. The whole Democra was exhibited against it in both Houses. It was a of a pledge of the platform, and only needs time the wisdom of its enactment.

POSTAL SAVINGS BANK.

The postal savings bank bill has a similar his one of the great Congressional enactments. It epoch. It institutes a system which will work ef promote thrift among the poor, by providing a de their savings which they properly may consider safe, and will also turn into the channels of trade merce a large volume of money which otherwise hoarded. By specific provision it will stimulate the of savings in Government bonds of small denomin which the bill provides. Like the tariff bill and th bill, this was put through each House of Congress by lican majority, and was signed by a Republican Pr

The legislation of Congress in respect to the Nav ment is a full compliance with the promises of the F platform. In spite of a proper desire to keep dow priations, Congress saw the necessity for a contin our present naval policy and a regular strengtheni Navy by the addition of two more battleships. More it has enabled the Secretary of the Navy to carry out in the business management of the Department and a ization of the bureaus and staff of the Navy so as to c materially to its effectiveness as one of the military the Government. Although the Democratic national apparently favored the increase in the Navy, a large

LABOR LEGISLATION.

of the Democrats, both in the House and the Senate, opposed the policy when presented in the form of concrete legislation.

The Republican party at the last session of Congress again exhibited its deep and sincere interest in the general welfare of the working men and women of the country by adding important enactments to its already long record of legislation on this subject. Practically all classes of employees, especially those engaged in occupations more or less hazardous, are the beneficiaries of laws which should operate to lighten the burdens which naturally fall upon the shoulders of man. The Republican party recognized the necessity of reducing the dangers under which hundreds of thousands of miners work by creating the Bureau of Mines. This bill was passed for the purpose of establishing an efficient governmental instrument for investigation, examination and report to the world of the kind of safety appliances that will prevent the awful losses of life in the operation of mines, and especially of coal mines. A second purpose of the bureau is to perform the same office in respect to the great industry of mining that the Department of Agriculture performs in respect to the farming interests of the country; that is, by experiment and investigation to determine the most effective methods of mining and the best means of avoiding the deplorable waste that now obtains in the present mining methods.

No more important legislation in the interest of human life has ever been enacted by Congress than the laws of the recent session giving to the Interstate Commerce Commission ampler powers to define the needed safety appliances for the prevention of accidents to employees and passengers, and, after a hearing, to require their adoption by interstate railways. Other legislation, with respect to the inspection of locomotive boilers and the removal of dangerous overhead obstructions, awaits the consideration of the next session of this Congress, and I hope that it may speedily be passed. The employers' liability act was perfected by needed amendment so as to enable injured employees more easily to recover just damages.

But in one sense the most forward step taken in the interest of the worker was the creation of a Congressional Commission to report a practical bill for the fixing of workmen's compensation for injuries received in the employment of interstate commerce railways, as risks in the business to be fixed by speedy arbitration and to be graduated according to the extent of the injury and the earning capacity of the injured person. This is important, not only as affecting interstate commerce railways, but, if adopted, as furnishing a model to the country for a beneficial change in the legal relation between employee and employer. This reform would put an end to the vexatious